Film grain

[czerwony]

Most of the photographer these days shoot digital but they still manage to get their pictures looking like they were shot on grainy films. I wondered, how do you achieve that effect (so it doesnt look obvious) in photoshop? Are they a special plug-ins for that or the Adobe filters originally installed in photoshop are capable to do that.

I tried many techniques but never got close to the effect they did for Mario Sorrenti in this picture.mario_sorrenti_1.jpg

How do you do that?

Thanks

[daygraphics]

There are lots of ways you can do this in Photoshop - not the least of which is under Filters/Add Noise/Grain, and you set your strength. Be sure to use Monochromatic or you will also get colorful grain (which changes the hues in the image). I like to use Gaussian versus Uniform - but it's your preference. If you should forget to NOT use Monochromatic, it is easy enough to bring back the original colors by setting your HISTORY set point before your "Add Noise" move, and fill from history in COLOR MODE.

This method can get kinda sandy and tooooo much fine grain for my liking on high res images. Play around with this and see what I mean...

Another way of adding it is is the initial stage of opening an in image in Camera RAW. There is a little used Effects tool (across the top of your main opening menu) with the icon fx. Here you have more latitude and control on film grain strength, size and roughness.

[DJSoulglo]

Or just shoot some gray cards with an analogue camera, scan them in and use those. Build your own little library of actual film grain that way.

[KR1156]

like they said, shoot a grey card...stop messing around.

[nebulaoperator]

Don't want to steal your thread just curious how do you people do that trick with grey card?

[thehjj]

Originally Posted by nebulaoperator

Don't want to steal your thread just curious how do you people do that trick with grey card?

I would imagine that they get a grey card, light it evenly, shoot it with a grainy film, and then scan the negative. Drop the scanned negative on top of your image and play with blending mode and opacity.

[DJSoulglo]

Shoot a Grey card. A good Grey card is 128/128/128 (RGB) or if you will 50% Grey.

This means if you take a well lit picture of a grey card, then scan it in, you can drop it on any picture set that layer to "SoftLight" or whatever you like and voila, it only shows the grain.

[nebulaoperator]

Thank you the hjj DjSoulglo.
just out of interest if b&w film do same job?

[thehjj]

b&w film would work just fine for shooting a grey card. If it's a true neutral grey card, it should look the same if it's color or b&w. Since you're only using it for the grain, either one would work just fine ... pretty sure anyways.

[holgaman]

Try Nik Silver Efex Pro, they have a great grain effect. You can either choose a specific film to emulate from the presets or make your own with sliders. This is the only plugin I've ever used that actually looks like real film grain as it incorporates the grain structure into the photo rather than just adding a texture on top of the photo.

[fotogen]

Try Exposure 2 from Allien Skin. It simulates lots of different fim's grains. It also has a grain feature which is very realistic. I love it. It costs around $250.00 but in my opinion, it is well worth it.

[czerwony]

Thanks guys. The grey card technique sounds quite interesting. Would love to try it if I owed a film camera :-( I may see however how much it costs to hire one to play around. Which film would you recommend for this?

As to the plugins. I'll have a good look at them as well. See whats works better.

Thanks

[Jenifer]

In film there is more grain & big grain in dark scenes & less grain & more fine grain in medium bright scenes, & no grain in bright/over exposed scenes. Anyone can teach how to make this effect ?

[holgaman]

Originally Posted by Jenifer

In film there is more grain & big grain in dark scenes & less grain & more fine grain in medium bright scenes, & no grain in bright/over exposed scenes. Anyone can teach how to make this effect ?

It depends on what kind of film you're talking about. That's true for some types of film, such as XP2, which is C-41 process, but standard black and white film is just the opposite. Clear areas on the negative would print black with little or no grain, while denser areas would print light with much more grain. Alien Skin Exposure has sliders to control the amount of grain in the highlights, midtones, and shadows, but the grain itself is not all that realistic, but is passible if you don't look too closely.

[Tony W]

Originally Posted by Jenifer

In film there is more grain & big grain in dark scenes & less grain & more fine grain in medium bright scenes, & no grain in bright/over exposed scenes. Anyone can teach how to make this effect ?

Holgaman is correct different films will show a different granular pattern - remember you are not seeing actual silver halide grains (these are too small to see individually). Rather what you are seeing on the print neg or slide is the clumping of grain its pattern depends so much on film type and even developer type it is not always easy to simulate. Also grain from film size and final print size plays a role. For instance a 35mm B&W film say Tri -x enlarged to 20x16 will exhibit much more granularity than the same film but taken with a 5x4 camera. And a smaller print may reveal no grain structure at all even with close examination - this used to be considered by many photographers nirvana! Strange now that we have virtually grain free images we now want to put grain back!

The attached image is something I tried some time ago to see what I needed to do to make a B&W digital image look like a traditional B&W print. The actual image of the face was from a 35mm negative originally FP4 enlarged to approximately 12x9". My efforts on the right - not too sucessful, however with more 'play time' could be improved. The Add Noise was done with strangely enough the Add Noise filter the right side of this gaussian blur applied. The other strip done with the Texture filter set to Grain. You will have to play about quite a bit to get the size correct and also the degree of blurring. Additional problem is that you will also need to apply some method of lowering the opacity of the pattern, certainly in the highlight and possibly in the dark shadow areas

[Chain]

Originally Posted by Tony W

Additional problem is that you will also need to apply some method of lowering the opacity of the pattern, certainly in the highlight and possibly in the dark shadow areas

If your noise is on a separate layer, then this is an easy way:
1. Load RGB channel as selection (cmd/ctrl-click it).
2. Add mask.
3. Invert and Image>Adjustments>Curves on the mask as needed.

This will provide good control over how visible the noise is at different brightnesses (is that a word?).

[Tony W]

Originally Posted by Chain

.....This will provide good control over how visible the noise is at different brightnesses (is that a word?).

If it is not a word it should be . Good tip

[Aether]

Here's a link to an already scanned in image of real film grain:

http://byscuits.com/grain-tm400.png

Not as good as doing it yourself, but good to give you an idea of the difference it makes.

[Chain]

Attached is a 100% crop where I used the grain image with overlay blending, with a mask. The grain was scaled up 200% (yes, I should have blurred it a bit), and the below image was blurred a bit to match. It could easily be automated as an action.

The grain image had to be adjusted first so it could be blended without brightening/darkening the image. I did this by running my own sharpening action, but you can get a fine result just using High Pass on it (~7 px radius should be enough).

Edit:
I actually have a tutorial for adding noise/grain like this (in norwegian, but well illustrated so with some google translate you will do fine). In the tutorial I simply use the regular noise filter with some gaussian blur, add a brightness mask, and blend it. I keep the noise as a smart layer so the filters can be adjusted quite easily.
http://adobe.rognemedia.no/?pg=article&id=144

Related I also have an action for extracting noise from low frequency areas of an image, so it can be turned into a pattern and applied to other elements/images. It's at the bottom of this tutorial detailing it:
http://adobe.rognemedia.no/?pg=article&id=110

[onesh0t]

Originally Posted by Aether

Here's a link to an already scanned in image of real film grain:

http://byscuits.com/grain-tm400.png

Not as good as doing it yourself, but good to give you an idea of the difference it makes.

That scan's workable, thanks. Tried googling for more, but it seem impossible to find.

[Chain]

It would be great if someone with the right equipment would shoot a good reference image of a smooth print with several shades of gray and upload it. That way we could get a sample from each level of brightness and use that as our reference when simulating it in Photoshop.

[Adrianr]

Alien Skin Exposure is literally the best bar none at doing this. The grain library is very comprehensive and the settings nearly endless. You can always output numerous attempts to 50% grey layers and build them gradually for different results too. The difference in quality between Alien Skin grain and Photoshop grain is worlds apart IMHO. Fits seamlessly into a Photoshop workflow too.

[holgaman]

I would agree that the grain in Exposure is better than in Photoshop, but Nik Silver Efex Pro still beats them both for being realistic. Exposure does have more adjustments and sliders, but it's way more than I would ever need. The big difference between Silver Efex and the others - what makes it more authentic looking - is that when it applies the grain, the image is actually made up of grain, it's incorporated as part of the image itself, not just an overlay like the others, like a print from a negative. You can adjust all day long in Exposure if you want and it will never look like a print from a negative. I have all of these programs and have done a lot of direct comparing. I've also had many, many years of B&W darkroom printing. Silver Efex Pro is the only program that looks like a darkroom print (actually better because of all the control there).